Jan 14 2010
Religion — Good or Bad?
The question in the title to this post is bogus. Can you spot why?
Yes, it’s that word — or. The question begs black or white answers. It very likely simplifies the issue to the point of gross distortion.
Valerie Tarico made the point in a recent HuffPost: Ugandan Atrocity: Perversion of Religion or the Real Deal?
She begin with this disturbing information:
Last week, the Seattle Times featured an editorial, finally, about the horrendous anti-gay movement that has been spawned in Uganda by American Evangelicals. Unable to make sufficient homophobic headway at home, evangelists have been heading to Africa, with their literally perfect Bibles as proof that God hates gays. Ugandan leaders found God – the god of the evangelists — and submitted a law condemning gays to death.
So religion is bad, right? Well, totally bad? Of course, religious folk keep touting the positive. Religion is good; religion is necessary. So, for balance, I guess, others attempt to rebut the claim.
But the good and bad are two sides of the religion coin. Religion isn’t “or,” rather it is “and.” As Tarico aptly puts it –
I find it ironic that anything evil done in the name of religion is a “perversion” or blasphemy — and anything good, that’s the real deal. It’s an argument I hear over and over in response to my articles on the Daily Kos and Huffington Post.
The falsehood is patently obvious. It’s like saying that selfishness and greed are a perversion of our humanity, and altruism is what humans really are all about. Get real. Ask any biologist whether dogs are affectionate or predatory and they will laugh at you: Do bees make honey or do they have stingers?
My selfishness is every bit as real as my generosity. My tenderness and bitchiness, compassion and aggression all are ME. Religion’s track record of power-brokering and atrocity is every bit as integral as its history of giving voice to our moral instincts and sense of wonder.
Actually, if religion were a coin, that coin would be one very complex, multi-sided thing.
One of the problems I have with any claims about religion being good or bad is that the examples cited assume that, religion aside, all other things/variables are equal. In other words, there is no control group in these discussions. Maybe religion is like a flag people march beneath, with little real causal power, good or bad. Mind you, I suspect that isn’t the case much of the time, but how are we to know that the good or bad wouldn’t get done without religion? That is one very important question.
It does seem to me, however, that religion includes two potent risks. First, the social structure it provides can be readily hijacked for bad. Oh, and for good. Can’t forget that. Are there other social structures out there that have a lesser propensity for being hijacked for bad but still retain the potential to do good?
Second risk: religious doctrine/dogma is generally moralistic. And people feel strongly about morals. Armed with emotional concepts, people will tend to use them, even where they don’t belong.
Consider this title and line of text I read this morning in a news release by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
“Americans United Condemns TV Preacher’s Callous Statement on Haitian Earthquake”
On his Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club” today, [Pat] Robertson said the Haitians “swore a pact to the devil” in order to become free of French domination.
And thus hell was unleashed on them.
If you ask me, Pat Robertson is insane. Delusional. One of the biggest “bads” religion seems to provide is a safe haven for delusions. Perhaps it even promotes their spread.
Is religion fully bad? No. Is it fully good? No. Can religion be refined to save the good while excising the bad? Maybe. But I suspect that once freed from all the dangerous and outdated content, what remained couldn’t be called religion. You’d have a secular interest group. Then why continue to call it religion? Because the term is attractive. And because we lack an equally attractive alternative.
“I’ll make a dirty little religion out of lovin’
I’ll make a dirty little convert out of you.”
- Warren Zevon
Clearly religion’s purveyors often use Manichaean (good vs evil) analysis without much room for nuance. It’s funny when the tactic gets turned on religion itself. The Manichaean tactic combines many logical fallacies, but the one that mosts interests me is Appeal to Emotion. Demonizing the opponent without sufficient evidence of malicious intent is the most primal fallacy. Scaremongering in general can be done without words, simply by acting frightened or wary in the presence of the opponent. So how do we protect ourselves from demonization/scaremongering?
All political groups use scare tactics, and we use free speech and high-tech media to correct rhetorical distortions, and we use courts to arbitrate and hopefully correct unfounded allegations of malicious intent. But this does not seem enough. Scare resistance needs to be built up culturally. We usually shake off scare fads by discrediting the scarer(s). The Red Scare dissipated with the censure of McCarthy. The Global Warming Scare is dissipating after the revelation of corruption of key science on which the doom case is built. The terrorism scares come and go, but Israelis still go to markets.
I propose we counter scares with debunks and by ridiculing the scarers. Satire is effective if it is based on more truth than the target of the satire has presented. The air must be cleared of alarm bells and screams before debate can occur, and the alarmists must be ridiculed and ostracized by journalists who want to retain credibility, and force them into kook forums. The MSM AND FOXNEWS are largely kook forums, due to their hunger for ratings…they sold their skeptical souls for attention. Even before Bill OReilly did so much time on Tiger Woods, I knew it wasn’t about being “Fair and Balanced…it’s about being Scarier and Scariest.
I’m waiting for SNN, the Skeptic News network, to apply a rational filter to the latest scares, hoaxes, potential epidemics, miracle cures, and get-rich-quick schemes… and use the most wicked satirists in the world to excoriate the scarers. I would probably watch no other news if such a channel existed.
Good work, Andrew.
[...] by two men or two women are no more at a disadvantage than children raised by a man and a woman. Religion — Good or Bad? gets it right in that religion is neither wholly bad or wholly good, but the worst you can say [...]
[...] next claim is that he believes the good done by religion outweighs the bad. While this point is clearly debatable, it is based on a faulty foundation. This would only be true if the original [...]